Post

Respected friends and acquaintances, initial-scale is dead! We are freed of its tyranny. You no longer need to include it in your HTML head. It is an obsolete part of your head's meta viewport declaration. The details: vale.rocks/micros/20260... #WebDev #HTML

vale.rocksYou Don't Need Initial-Scale In Your HTML - 2 Sept 2026 13:50 UTC

2/9/26, 1:42 pm20 reposts106 likes

Kilian Valkhof

@kilianvalkhof.com

2 Sept

Thank you for your efforts 🫡

romainmenke

@romainmenke.bsky.social

2 Sept

Do you have any details on the exact version of iOS when this became redundant? Might not be dead for everyone 😅

Vale

@vale.rocks

2 Sept

I just tested on an iPad running iOS 10. Seemed to handle it fine without initial-scale. I'd suggest it changed in iOS 9 when Safari's view controller was exposed to apps.

romainmenke

@romainmenke.bsky.social

2 Sept

Do you have a hosted test? I can try it through browserstack.

Vale

@vale.rocks

2 Sept

@quirksmode.org has one at quirksmode.org/m/tests/meta.... I did just find an old iPod Touch running iOS 9.3.5 however. It scales the page up when the orientation changed. Evidently it wasn't iOS 9 with which it changed then.

quirksmode.orgMeta viewport test

Vale

@vale.rocks

3 Sept

Shout out to the people complaining that removing `initial-scale=1.0` harms the experience on iOS 8. Wild.